Formal and Informal Assessment of Student Learning
Name: Liza Ginis My comments are in red. Delete them if you choose to revise. - fogleman I embedded your attached documents to allow less clicking.
I. Assignment Description/Requirements
The informal assignment I am posting here is a homework assignment which reinforces the learning goals for a lesson on the landforms created by volcanic activity. A review was done in class at the end of the day before the homework assignment was handed out and a second review after I corrected the assignments and could see areas which needed clarification. The formal assignment was the end of unit exam that the students had to take which covered everything we learned about volcanoes.
II. Description of Learning Goals
A. Informal Assessment
The learning goals for the lesson that go along with the homework assignment above are....
Devise working definitions for the words magma and lava.
Identify landforms created by molten rock.
Describe the difference between how volcanoes and non-volcanic mountain ranges form.
B. Formal Assessment
Students can label the different layers of the Earth.
Students can identify which layers are solid and which are liquid.
Students can define lithosphere and asthenosphere.
Students can explain the characteristics of oceanic vs. continental plates.
Students can explain the characteristics of Transform, Convergent, and Divergent plate boundaries.
Students can identify which type of fault is responsible for mountain building, oceanic trenches, subduction zones, and ridges.
Students can simulate how plates move.
Draw a model of the convection currents in Earth's mantle.
Describe a convection current and its role in moving Earth's lithospheric plates.
Explain the Rock cycle and the different characteristics of Igneous, Sedimentary, and Metamorphic Rocks.
Make observations of rock samples.
Classify rock samples based on observations.
Define minerals.
Explain each of the physical properties that can be used to identify a mineral; color, luster, hardness, streak, density, crystal shape, cleavage and fracture.
Identify unknown minerals using physical properties.
Define igneous rock, extrusive & intrusive igneous rock, and crystallization.
Analyze the size of crystals that form from a solution under different cooling conditions.
Analyze the properties of a volcanic ash sample and its general composition.
Develop a working definition for the word "ash."
Observe samples of rock formed by consolidated ash.
Investigate how volcanic ash erupts into and settles out of the air.
Determine how the size of airborne materials affects where and how fast they settle.
Draw conclusions about how weather conditions affect the direction and speed at which ash moves.
Identify constructive and destructive effects of ash fall (land formation, human health, weather).
Analyze causes and effects of volcanic eruptions and the ability of scientists to forecast volcanic activity.
Classify the effects of volcanic eruptions as destructive or constructive.
Explain the characteristics that differentiate between Composite, Shield, and Cinder Cone volcanoes.
Identify and compare the viscosity of liquids.
Observe changes in viscosity when liquids are mixed with a solid or heated.
Define viscosity and relate the viscosity of lava to the type of volcano it forms.
Model the movement of molten rock through fractures in the lithosphere, over Earth's surface, and under water.
Devise working definitions for the words magma and lava.
Identify landforms created by molten rock.
III. Assessments
A. Description of Informal Assessment
For an informal assessment, I have created a set of reflection questions which require the students to relate ideas that they learned during an activity in which the students simulated various volcanic landforms being created to the descriptions of these real landforms. Some of these questions also require students to think critically about the difference between how these landforms are created and how a different kind of landform can be created.
The formal assessment is a unit exam on everything we have covered about volcanoes. Some of these questions are connected to the informal assessment listed above. This exam contains a variety of question styles including; multiple choice, true/false, matching, labeling diagrams, drawing a diagram, and 3 short essay questions.
The class which I took this assessment data from is a heterogeneous group of eighth graders from a public suburban middle school. The class has 17 students containing 9 females and 8 males. Two of the students in the class have IEP's. One IEP student is a female who is hard of hearing, but has no learning disabilities. The other IEP student is a male who is learning disabled, and who was given extended time and word banks on the formal assessment. He was not given any modifications on the informal assessment.
B. Analysis of Informal Assessment
The class average for the informal assessment was an 82 and the grades ranged between 50 and 95. To grade this assignment, I used a system of checks. A check plus is equivalent to a 95 and is given to students who show complete knowledge of the material. A check is equivalent to a 85 and is given to students who show knowledge of the material, but who may have made one or two simple mistakes. A check minus is equivalent to a 75 and is given to students who show small gaps in their understanding of the material. A check minus minus is equivalent to a 65 and is given to students who clearly illustrate wrong or unclear understanding of the material. Finally, a 50 is given to students who did not complete the assignment or very little effort was put into completing the assignment. Your informal assessment is pretty long. Given your check system, how did you assess each paper and what type of feedback did you provide. When they received their papers back with a single "check," were students able to tell what they had done incorrectly? Given the several scans you provided, are them some that can serve as examples of the type of feedback you provided? If so, which ones?
To analyze the class data from a different perspective, I separated the data into two groups. These two groups were males and females. The male average on the informal assessment was a 79 and the grades ranged between 50 and 95. The female average was an 84 and ranged between 65 and 95. I don't think this was asked for for the informal assessment.
C. Analysis of Formal Assessment
The class average for the formal assessment was a 79 and the grades ranged between 44 and 98. This assignment contained 5 true or false questions worth 2 points each for a total of 10 points. For these questions, students were required to make the questions that were false true by changing an underlined word. Partial credit was given if they knew it was false, but were unable to come up with the correct true response. The next 7 questions were descriptions or definitions that the students had to match to the correct word or phrase. There were 10 choices to match to. This was done so that the students could not simply use a process of elimination to get the correct answers. This section was worth 14 points (2 points per question). The next section contained 5 multiple choice questions, each question was worth 2 points for a total of 10 points for the section. Following multiple choice was a question worth 10 points in which the students had to draw convection currents in the mantle and then show how this motion moved lithospheric plates. It also required the students to label important pieces of the diagram that helped demonstrate true knowledge of what the diagram depicts. A labeling section came next. This section had three diagrams and the students were required to label different parts of each diagram. There were 13 labels and each was worth 2 points for a total of 26 points. It was on this section that a word bank was provided to the student based on his IEP instructions. The students all had seen these diagrams before in class and they were included on a study guide which I gave to them the day before the exam. The final section was critical thinking and consisted of three essay questions worth 10 points each for a total of 30 points. Students were given partial credit on these essays based on a reduction of points for ideas which were missing but important to the question. These critical thinking essays required students to apply what they learned about individual topics to a larger idea. Finally, I did include a bonus question worth a maximum of 3 points. The total of points possible on this exam was 103. How did you assess/evaluate the essay questions? What type of feedback did you provide? Did you use a rubric or a feedback guide? Could such a resource help you grade these test quicker in the future?
This assessment was related to the informal assessment because topics from the informal assessment were included in the formal assessment. In fact, one of the critical thinking essays was a question which was created from the big ideas of the homework assignment. I chose to include this question because when grading the informal assessment, I noticed a lot of misconceptions with this concept. Because of this, I spent extra time going over the answer to this question when I handed back the homework and then again during our review the day before the test. I wanted to see how many students were able to answer this question correctly on the test since I spent so much time addressing the topic in class.
To analyze this data from another perspective, I seperated the data into two groups. Just like for the informal assessment, I chose to have one group of females and one group of males. The average for the group of males was 75 and the scores ranged between 44 and 94. The average for the group of females was 83 and the scores ranged between 48 and 98.
V. Commentary / Reflection
A. Reflections from Informal Assessment
I believe that my informal assessment was decent (???) because the class average was an 82 and it can be seen that both females and males performed about the same on the assignment since the female average was an 84 and the male average was a 79. There was a five point difference in these averages, but the groups were not equal in number. There was 9 girls and only 8 boys so this may have skewed the data a little bit. I do not think this 5 point difference in averages means that the assessment was easier for girls than for boys. Since I used a check grading system, the range was only from 50 to 95 instead of 0 to 100, but I still believe that an average of 82 proves this assessment was valid. I would agree with you that the grades were unproblematic. What did you learn about what your students understood about magma, lava, and landforms based on their answers? Are you confident everyone understood everything, or were there concepts that several students had trouble with? Was the writing at an appropriate level, indicating your instructions were clear?
B. Reflections from Formal Assessment
I believe that my formal assessment was also a valid measure of understanding because the class average was a 79, which is a C+, which is considered slightly above average. This average was also close to the average obtained on the informal assessment which helps illustrate consistency. As with the other assessment, the girls average was slightly higher than the boys average, but it still was not enough of a difference for me to consider the test more favorable for one sex. The girl's average was an 83 and the boys was a 75, making an 8 point difference. Since the girls performed slightly better on the last assessment as well, I believe that it is the dynamics for this class and not due to an unfair assessment.
This is a very well-constructed test. What else can you as a teacher learn from your students' performance that you can use the next time you teach this topic? What was the distribution of hard, medium, and easy questions? Were there performance patterns within each difficulty level? You don't need answer these questions now, but in the future, when you spend time creating a good test, you should also think about how you can analyze your results to assess your teaching.
VI. Conclusions
To look more closely at the two types of assessment, I chose three different students to analyze.
The first student, Bethany, earned a 95 on the informal assessment and a 98 on the formal assessment. Her work was consistent and illustrates understanding of the big ideas from our unit. However, on the exam, she lost partial credit on the essay question which addressed the big ideas from the informal assessment. Since she scored the top grade in the class, I can conclude that this question was one of the hardest on the exam. This means that my reviews on the topic were not successful.
The second student, Jordan, earned an 85 on the informal assessment and a 74 on the formal assessment. On his homework assignment, he was incorrect in answering the question which related the big idea used for the critical thinking essay. On the exam, he only received half of the available points when answering this question again. This leads me to believe that he did not benefit from my review and feedback after the homework assignment.
The third and final student I looked at was Clifton. Clifton earned a 65 on the informal assessment and a 44 on the formal assessment. Clifton's answers on questions are vague on both assessments, and it can be seen that he did not grasp most of the big ideas from this unit. Clifton did not even attempt to answer the question which the other two students did not answer correctly. This reinforces the idea that this question was difficult for students from every ability level and that my time reviewing the concept was not helpful.
By taking the time to analyze the results from these two assessments, I am able to see that overall both assessments were reliable and valid. The formal assessment was built from more than this one informal assessment, but I can evaluate the concepts from the one specific informal assessment by looking at the questions from the formal assessment that directly relate to the shared concepts.
The most important thing that I learned from this analysis is that my verbal reviews of the misconception on the informal assessment did not help clarify the problem before the formal assessment was given. If I had this unit to teach again, I would find another way to specifically address this misconception. Perhaps finding a video clip, animation, or doing a hands on lab could help to clarify the misconception. Obviously more time was needed to cover this topic than I gave for this class. Even though at the time I thought, okay I need to review this because the students aren't getting it, I was wrong in thinking that a verbal review would be beneficial to the kids. It is now clear that they needed to look at the concept in more detail than I allowed them to in order to truly understand the underlying ideas.
Formal and Informal Assessment of Student Learning
Name: Liza Ginis
My comments are in red. Delete them if you choose to revise. -
I embedded your attached documents to allow less clicking.
I. Assignment Description/Requirements
The informal assignment I am posting here is a homework assignment which reinforces the learning goals for a lesson on the landforms created by volcanic activity. A review was done in class at the end of the day before the homework assignment was handed out and a second review after I corrected the assignments and could see areas which needed clarification. The formal assignment was the end of unit exam that the students had to take which covered everything we learned about volcanoes.
II. Description of Learning Goals
A. Informal Assessment
The learning goals for the lesson that go along with the homework assignment above are....
B. Formal Assessment
III. Assessments
A. Description of Informal Assessment
For an informal assessment, I have created a set of reflection questions which require the students to relate ideas that they learned during an activity in which the students simulated various volcanic landforms being created to the descriptions of these real landforms. Some of these questions also require students to think critically about the difference between how these landforms are created and how a different kind of landform can be created.B. Description of Formal Assessment
The formal assessment is a unit exam on everything we have covered about volcanoes. Some of these questions are connected to the informal assessment listed above. This exam contains a variety of question styles including; multiple choice, true/false, matching, labeling diagrams, drawing a diagram, and 3 short essay questions.IV. Analysis
A. Description of Class Context
The class which I took this assessment data from is a heterogeneous group of eighth graders from a public suburban middle school. The class has 17 students containing 9 females and 8 males. Two of the students in the class have IEP's. One IEP student is a female who is hard of hearing, but has no learning disabilities. The other IEP student is a male who is learning disabled, and who was given extended time and word banks on the formal assessment. He was not given any modifications on the informal assessment.
B. Analysis of Informal Assessment
The class average for the informal assessment was an 82 and the grades ranged between 50 and 95. To grade this assignment, I used a system of checks. A check plus is equivalent to a 95 and is given to students who show complete knowledge of the material. A check is equivalent to a 85 and is given to students who show knowledge of the material, but who may have made one or two simple mistakes. A check minus is equivalent to a 75 and is given to students who show small gaps in their understanding of the material. A check minus minus is equivalent to a 65 and is given to students who clearly illustrate wrong or unclear understanding of the material. Finally, a 50 is given to students who did not complete the assignment or very little effort was put into completing the assignment.
Your informal assessment is pretty long. Given your check system, how did you assess each paper and what type of feedback did you provide. When they received their papers back with a single "check," were students able to tell what they had done incorrectly? Given the several scans you provided, are them some that can serve as examples of the type of feedback you provided? If so, which ones?
To analyze the class data from a different perspective, I separated the data into two groups. These two groups were males and females. The male average on the informal assessment was a 79 and the grades ranged between 50 and 95. The female average was an 84 and ranged between 65 and 95. I don't think this was asked for for the informal assessment.
C. Analysis of Formal Assessment
The class average for the formal assessment was a 79 and the grades ranged between 44 and 98. This assignment contained 5 true or false questions worth 2 points each for a total of 10 points. For these questions, students were required to make the questions that were false true by changing an underlined word. Partial credit was given if they knew it was false, but were unable to come up with the correct true response. The next 7 questions were descriptions or definitions that the students had to match to the correct word or phrase. There were 10 choices to match to. This was done so that the students could not simply use a process of elimination to get the correct answers. This section was worth 14 points (2 points per question). The next section contained 5 multiple choice questions, each question was worth 2 points for a total of 10 points for the section. Following multiple choice was a question worth 10 points in which the students had to draw convection currents in the mantle and then show how this motion moved lithospheric plates. It also required the students to label important pieces of the diagram that helped demonstrate true knowledge of what the diagram depicts. A labeling section came next. This section had three diagrams and the students were required to label different parts of each diagram. There were 13 labels and each was worth 2 points for a total of 26 points. It was on this section that a word bank was provided to the student based on his IEP instructions. The students all had seen these diagrams before in class and they were included on a study guide which I gave to them the day before the exam. The final section was critical thinking and consisted of three essay questions worth 10 points each for a total of 30 points. Students were given partial credit on these essays based on a reduction of points for ideas which were missing but important to the question. These critical thinking essays required students to apply what they learned about individual topics to a larger idea. Finally, I did include a bonus question worth a maximum of 3 points. The total of points possible on this exam was 103. How did you assess/evaluate the essay questions? What type of feedback did you provide? Did you use a rubric or a feedback guide? Could such a resource help you grade these test quicker in the future?
This assessment was related to the informal assessment because topics from the informal assessment were included in the formal assessment. In fact, one of the critical thinking essays was a question which was created from the big ideas of the homework assignment. I chose to include this question because when grading the informal assessment, I noticed a lot of misconceptions with this concept. Because of this, I spent extra time going over the answer to this question when I handed back the homework and then again during our review the day before the test. I wanted to see how many students were able to answer this question correctly on the test since I spent so much time addressing the topic in class.
To analyze this data from another perspective, I seperated the data into two groups. Just like for the informal assessment, I chose to have one group of females and one group of males. The average for the group of males was 75 and the scores ranged between 44 and 94. The average for the group of females was 83 and the scores ranged between 48 and 98.
V. Commentary / Reflection
A. Reflections from Informal Assessment
I believe that my informal assessment was decent (???) because the class average was an 82 and it can be seen that both females and males performed about the same on the assignment since the female average was an 84 and the male average was a 79. There was a five point difference in these averages, but the groups were not equal in number. There was 9 girls and only 8 boys so this may have skewed the data a little bit. I do not think this 5 point difference in averages means that the assessment was easier for girls than for boys. Since I used a check grading system, the range was only from 50 to 95 instead of 0 to 100, but I still believe that an average of 82 proves this assessment was valid. I would agree with you that the grades were unproblematic. What did you learn about what your students understood about magma, lava, and landforms based on their answers? Are you confident everyone understood everything, or were there concepts that several students had trouble with? Was the writing at an appropriate level, indicating your instructions were clear?B. Reflections from Formal Assessment
I believe that my formal assessment was also a valid measure of understanding because the class average was a 79, which is a C+, which is considered slightly above average. This average was also close to the average obtained on the informal assessment which helps illustrate consistency. As with the other assessment, the girls average was slightly higher than the boys average, but it still was not enough of a difference for me to consider the test more favorable for one sex. The girl's average was an 83 and the boys was a 75, making an 8 point difference. Since the girls performed slightly better on the last assessment as well, I believe that it is the dynamics for this class and not due to an unfair assessment.This is a very well-constructed test. What else can you as a teacher learn from your students' performance that you can use the next time you teach this topic? What was the distribution of hard, medium, and easy questions? Were there performance patterns within each difficulty level? You don't need answer these questions now, but in the future, when you spend time creating a good test, you should also think about how you can analyze your results to assess your teaching.
VI. Conclusions
To look more closely at the two types of assessment, I chose three different students to analyze.
The first student, Bethany, earned a 95 on the informal assessment and a 98 on the formal assessment. Her work was consistent and illustrates understanding of the big ideas from our unit. However, on the exam, she lost partial credit on the essay question which addressed the big ideas from the informal assessment. Since she scored the top grade in the class, I can conclude that this question was one of the hardest on the exam. This means that my reviews on the topic were not successful.
The second student, Jordan, earned an 85 on the informal assessment and a 74 on the formal assessment. On his homework assignment, he was incorrect in answering the question which related the big idea used for the critical thinking essay. On the exam, he only received half of the available points when answering this question again. This leads me to believe that he did not benefit from my review and feedback after the homework assignment.
The third and final student I looked at was Clifton. Clifton earned a 65 on the informal assessment and a 44 on the formal assessment. Clifton's answers on questions are vague on both assessments, and it can be seen that he did not grasp most of the big ideas from this unit. Clifton did not even attempt to answer the question which the other two students did not answer correctly. This reinforces the idea that this question was difficult for students from every ability level and that my time reviewing the concept was not helpful.
By taking the time to analyze the results from these two assessments, I am able to see that overall both assessments were reliable and valid. The formal assessment was built from more than this one informal assessment, but I can evaluate the concepts from the one specific informal assessment by looking at the questions from the formal assessment that directly relate to the shared concepts.
The most important thing that I learned from this analysis is that my verbal reviews of the misconception on the informal assessment did not help clarify the problem before the formal assessment was given. If I had this unit to teach again, I would find another way to specifically address this misconception. Perhaps finding a video clip, animation, or doing a hands on lab could help to clarify the misconception. Obviously more time was needed to cover this topic than I gave for this class. Even though at the time I thought, okay I need to review this because the students aren't getting it, I was wrong in thinking that a verbal review would be beneficial to the kids. It is now clear that they needed to look at the concept in more detail than I allowed them to in order to truly understand the underlying ideas.